WorldSBK at Motorland Aragón: Superpole® for Davies who crashes out in Race 1, leaving the victory to Rea; the new Pirelli qualifying tyre makes its début with a record

The Welsh Ducati rider takes pole with a time of 1’49.319 breaking thetrack record set by Sykes in 2016 but after an exciting duel it would beJonathan Rea winning the race astride his Kawasaki

Race 1 of the MOTUL FIM World Superbike Championship held on the Spanish Motorland Aragón circuit just came to an end with the victory going to Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki Racing Team).
Until the penultimate lap, the undisputed protagonist of the day was actually Chaz Davies (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati): in fact, on a track that historically favours Ducati, the Welshman managed to win Superpole®in the morning. He then went on to ignite an exciting duel with the defending World Champion where he managed to stay in the lead until the seventeenth lap when the Ducati rider crashed out, leaving the race win to Rea.

Race 1 podium

The début of the new qualifying tyre introduced by Pirelli in this round was excellent and even beyond all expectations. With the stated objective of allowing the riders to complete more than one flying lap, therefore having more opportunities to be able to set their best time, the new tyre consequently has a different compound than the previous, very soft Superpole® tyres. It is a compound more similar to that of a soft SC0 tyre, precisely because it needs to last more than one lap. Despite being in its absolute début, the new tyre allowed both Chaz Davies and Jonathan Rea to drop below the track record set in 2016 by Tom Sykes. In particular, Chaz Davies put a time of 1’49.319 on the sheets, improving the times by almost a second that were done in Superpole®and the various other sessions with race tyres.

Group action at the start

As already mentioned, in Race 1, which was 91.386 kilometres and eighteen laps long, had Chaz Davies (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati) and Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki Racing Team) as its main protagonists, overtaking one another several times throughout the race and engaging in an exciting and heated duel.
Unfortunately, in the sixth lap the race lost one of its key players all too soon when Xavi Forés crashed out. In the meantime, Rea overtook Davies on the eighth lap, moving into the lead, but soon after Davies took it back. The Northern Irishman would get past Davies again temporarily in the sixteenth lap. During the seventeenth and penultimate lap, Davies was in the lead, but he took a sliding crash unexpectedly, throwing his chances of what would have been his first victory of the season to the wind. This left Jonathan Rea to take his fifth consecutive win out of a total of five races held. Behind him, an excellent Marco Melandri (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati) crossed the line second, followed by Rea's teammate, Tom Sykes, finishing third.

The Pirelli solutions chosen by the riders for WorldSBK Race 1:
For the first European round of the 2017 season, the WorldSBK riders can count on a total of seven slick solutions, four for the front and three rear, including four standard and three development solutions.
As for the rear, also considering the low asphalt temperatures, more than half of the riders opted for the new W0051 solution in the SC1 development compound (option B),which guaranteed more even wear and better mechanical grip. Of the remaining riders, four chose the standard SC1 solution (option C) and the other four went with the standard SC0 (option A).

Group in action

Melandri in action

Choices for the rear tyre were much more varied, where the most popular was the new V0952 SC1 development solution (option C),followed by four preferences of the standard SC2 (option D). The remaining six riders were split equally between the standard SC1 (option B) and the S1699 SC1 development solution S1699 (option A).

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